What’s gone so wrong with the U.S. pandemic response?

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July 9, 2020

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! A Supreme Court ruling threatens access to birth control, the 1619 Project partners with Oprah, and Fortune taps into a health care brain trust. Have a lovely Thursday.

– Trust and inspiration in the pandemic age. Fortune hosted its first-ever virtual Brainstorm Health conference this week and one question was top of mind: What’s gone so wrong with the U.S. response to the pandemic?

On Tuesday, Agnes Binagwaho , Rwanda’s former health minister and now a senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School, provided some insight by comparing the Rwanda’s “decentralized health care system” to that of the U.S. Rwanda’s approach has meant distributing community health workers across the country and getting commitment to health goals from everyone, from educators to law enforcement. The U.S. system, by contrast, has seen investment in community and public health deteriorate in recent decades, said Sheila Davis, CEO of Partners in Health.

Rwanda’s system has bred deep public trust in health institutions and authorities; the country has the highest level of trust in clinics and hospitals in the world. The U.S., meanwhile, is a hotbed of distrust, where even the value of face masks is questioned.

“[The U.S. doesn’t] have the benefits of a community health system like they have in Rwanda,” Davis told the Brainstorm audience.

The consequences of that shortcoming came up in another conversation with Dr. Julie Gerberding, EVP and chief patent officer at Merck , who flagged the U.S.’s waning public trust in vaccines. “Trust isn’t going to come from the top down, especially in this political environment,” she said. She said even the name of the project to accelerate U.S. vaccine development—Operation Warp Speed—is potentially problematic since it seems incongruous with safety. Inoculating the U.S. population, when a coronavirus vaccine is ready, will require grass-roots campaigns to assuage any public doubts, Gerberding said.

There are a few bright spots in this pandemic, and Brainstorm guests highlighted those, too. FitbitHealth SVP and general manager Amy McDonough said Fitbit users are getting fewer steps; the elimination of American’s commutes is likely a factor. But another type of exercise—purposeful activity—is on the rise. “[T]hat is resulting in…statistically significant decreases in things like resting heart rate,” she said. Plus, data from more than 30 million users show people are also getting increased rest and more consistency in their sleep—both keys to maintaining robust immune systems.

Sophie Grégoire Trudeau , a women’s and mental health advocate and wife of Canada’s prime minister, called attention to the collective trauma of the pandemic. “We’re all one trauma away from one another,” she said. But she’s also drawn inspiration from the empathy at play in the crisis. “Having studied empathy and development in babies, we tend to be happy,” she told Brainstorm attendees. “Our true nature is to be loved and understood for who we are. And we want to express freely our own creative selves. And in situations of fear and stress and anger and divide, I think human goodness is being triggered and ignited.”

You can find more coverage of Brainstorm Health here.

Claire Zillman
claire.zillman@fortune.com
@clairezillman

Today’s Broadsheet was curated by Emma Hinchliffe.

ALSO IN THE HEADLINES

- Ruling on religion. The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 yesterday that the Trump Administration was permitted to create a "religious or moral objection" exemption to the Affordable Care Act's requirement that employers cover birth control for their workers. "Today, for the first time, the Court casts totally aside countervailing rights and interests in its zeal to secure religious rights to the nth degree," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in her dissent. Seventy thousand women are expected to lose access to birth control because of the ruling. Fortune

- Long-awaited lawsuit. Does this story sound familiar? Drisana Rios, a former insurance brokerage account executive, says she was working "harder than [she] ever ha[d] in [her] entire career" after transitioning to remote work in March—while also caring for her two children. Now, in a lawsuit, Rios alleges that she was fired because her children made noise while she was on business calls at home during the pandemic. The company, Hub International, declined to comment. New York Times

- Oprah + 1619. Nikole Hannah-Jones won a Pulitzer Prize and changed the way the United States thinks about its history with the 1619 Project, named for the year enslaved Africans arrived on American shores. Now, Hannah-Jones and the New York Times have partnered with Oprah Winfrey and Lionsgate to produce a portfolio of film and television projects based on the work. The Root

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Coty, the cosmetics company recently in the news for its deals with the Kardashians, named L'Oréal vet Sue Nabi CEO; she's the company's fourth chief executive this year. The company also hired Princess Anna of Bavaria as chief corporate affairs officer. Crate & Barrel named former Williams-Sonoma exec Janet Hayes CEO; she succeeds departing CEO Neela Montgomery. Earnest hired AnitaB.org's Victoria Hughes as chief people officer. The cruise industry, led in this by Royal Caribbean Group and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd., assembled a "Healthy Sail" panel of public health experts including Julie Gerberding, a former head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the current chief patient officer of Merck, and Helene Gayle, a longtime CDC veteran and former CEO of CARE. Highlights named Justice for Girls' Lece Lohr president of Highlights Consumer Business.

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